3 Tips To Improve the Mobile Experience
According to mobiThinking, In 2009 there were over 5.3 billion mobile subscribers and over half a billion had a smartphone. In 2011, 85% of those mobile subscribers will have web-enabled smartphones. That’s a huge spike in web-enabled mobile users. Although many companies have adopted some of the latest trends of smartphones, there are 3 things that they have not fully capitalized to their full potential. These 3 areas of opportunity can easily help your business adopt to the fast-paced mobile world and improve your customer’s experience:
NFC capabilities: Get enrolled now!
Most of all retailers and small business have a merchant Point of Sale machine that handle debit and credit card transactions, and now is the time for those machines to get upgraded to handle the onslaught of NFC enabled mobile phones that will be soon shipping within the next 2 years. Be ahead of the curve and get signed up or upgrade soon. This will not only give you a competitive advantage over other retailers but it will keep customer satisfaction high, as many consumers will be eager to try this new form of payment.
Get Proactively Involved with E-Coupons and Rewards.
Many consumers are shifting their shopping from actual stores to online retailers like Amazon or eBay, and they do so because they have great confidence that they will get a better deal online then they would at the store. Therefore, when they’re met with a tempting deal at a store, they hesitate and choose to look it up and buy it online. Actively applying discounts and reward points will give that customer an emotional sensation to buy now, rather then later, will help your business win that sale immediately. E-Coupons and rewards can be used in conjunction with NFC enabled phones and apply automatic discounts and reward points when an enabled NFC phone is used as form of payment at the register. Such a feature is being rolled out with Google’s own offering of Google wallet and I recommend you take immediate action to differentiate yourself before it becomes the norm. Remember be proactive, not reactive. Customers always love to be rewarded without having to chase down discounts.
Compatible Websites: Make your website compatible to mobile web browsers.
Many of the huge retailers have already jumped on board with creating specific mobile applications pertaining to their company for the two larges phone ecosystems: Android and the iPhone. However, not everyone has an Android or an iPhone so creating many different types of applications for each specific mobile operating system can be expensive and time consuming, especially for smaller businesses. In addition, with the large pool of applications between Android and iPhone, only 1 of 4 applications downloaded actually get used. Therefore, when creating website for your company, make sure that your site is mobile browser friendly. Make things simple and accessible to customers without having them to zoom in on a page that’s meant for your laptop on a small 4 inch portable screen. In addition, if your website requires the user to fill out a form — for example loan applications — please make it mobile friendly. I can’t tell you how many times I started to fill out a form on my phone but just quit because it was just too much work.
Some of these tips sound like common sense but it will make you wonder why it isn’t a uniform standard across many retailers and companies. The truth is that the most of these initiatives will eventually become standard, but the key to your business is to be ahead of the curve and give your customer that friendly mobile experience and satisfaction they haven’t felt anywhere else.
Source: mobiThinking




I don’t think there is a day that goes by where something about Twitter is not being talked about. That’s great for them, but what is it really bringing them as far as money in their pockets? It seems they are still working on long term initiatives that would help them make money off it’s popularity. However, for now they are continuing to come up with ideas that will help the current users make money. In the next few days, they will be rolling out the first phase of educational information for businesses on how they can effectively use Twitter to generate revenue for their own company (big and small). Twitter will continue to roll out educational information so they can help their users become more Twitter savvy with Tweeting. They see their site as a great tool for businesses to use to help generate revenue. Does this mean if they are going to help educate businesses on how to make money, then they must have something planned for themselves on how THEY are going to make money? I hope so!